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Vancouver Coastal Health and St. Paul’s Hospital are joining forces to combat Vancouver’s soaring alcohol and drug addiction problem with the appointment of Dr. Evan Wood as the new medical director for addiction services at VCH and physician program director for addiction at Providence Health Care.

“There has been an 89-per-cent increase in presentations to St. Paul’s emergency room for addiction issues over the last four years,” said Wood. Although Vancouver has made some strides in dealing with the city’s addiction-affected population through harm reduction, Wood plans to zero in on what he sees as a critical missing part of the addiction services puzzle. “The educating of physicians is a huge thing. Traditionally, addictions have languished on the margins of the health care system and it has created huge costs in all the health concerns that ultimately can result from addiction.”

Wood believes addiction is a health issue as specialized as cardiology or cancer.

When patients have a cardiology issue, or are dealing with cancer, they are treated by a team of trained experts, said Wood. “For addiction as a health issue, it should be the same.”

In 2012, Wood established the Goldcorp addiction medicine fellowship at St. Paul’s, Western Canada’s first American Board of Addiction Medicine accredited addiction physician training program, with a goal of giving 20 specialist physicians over five years the tools to prevent and treat addiction. Now he envisions an integrated research, learning and treatment centre similar to the B.C. Centre For Excellence in HIV/AIDS.

He said it would “perform research that can inform the system of care, particularly doing clinical trials of new medications. We are keen to establish that infrastructure.

“Right now most primary care physicians are not equipped with the tools to help with addiction,” he added. “The capacity to intervene early and the ability to help with patients once they are very sick is lacking. It is a fundamental barrier.”

Dianne Doyle, president and CEO of PHC, lauded the appointment. “Addiction and health complications of untreated addiction have become a primary driver of admissions to St. Paul’s Hospital,” she said. “Turning things around will require not only evidence-based prevention and treatment services but also the integration of research and educational efforts.”

Health expert to tackle Vancouver’s addiction puzzle

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